Happy Birthday in Heaven, Mama
Happy Birthday in Heaven, Mama
How trauma, the body, faith, and art intersect across generations
Today, January 12, this beautiful lady would have been 100 years old. This is Betty Jane — otherwise known as Bjay.
She was born in 1926 to a single mother we called Minnie, whose given name was Minerva. My grandmother had a hard road, as did her own mother before her. We’re talking about generations of women who faced hardship — likely physical challenges and traumas we may never fully know.
One thing I do know is that Minnie loved her mother deeply and wanted to help her financially. In desperation, she prostituted herself to help pay bills and put food on the table. Out of that act of survival, my mother was conceived.
If you knew my mom, you knew she was funny, generous, and kind. But there was another side to her — one that was torn and deeply unhappy. She lived with many physical ailments, some shaped by lifestyle, but I believe others were rooted in trauma. She loved Jesus with her whole heart, and in her final days she focused entirely on Him, preparing to go home. She passed on June 17, 2014, at the age of 88.
I miss her every day — her humor, her wisdom, her listening ear, her counsel — even though we often butted heads.
Trauma, the Body, and What We Carry Forward
I’ve been thinking a lot about trauma — what it means for me and what it may mean for my children. Trauma has become a buzzword, and rightly so. There is a branch of science called epigenetics, which studies how gene expression can change without altering the DNA sequence itself.
In simple terms, epigenetics looks at how experiences — especially chronic stress, fear, neglect, or trauma — can influence how certain genes are turned on or off. These changes don’t break our DNA, but they can affect how our bodies respond to stress, emotion, and survival over time.
Modern science is beginning to confirm something Scripture has hinted at for generations: our bodies remember what our minds may not.
Research suggests that trauma doesn’t change the DNA code itself, but it can influence how genes involved in stress response and emotional regulation are expressed — including trauma experienced during pregnancy. When a mother’s nervous system is under chronic stress, it can shape the biological environment in which a child’s body is formed.
This helps explain why some of us grow up with heightened anxiety, hypervigilance, or emotional sensitivity — even before we have our own traumatic stories. It’s not because we are broken. It’s because our bodies learned how to survive across generations.
Scripture, Generations, and Hope
The Bible has long acknowledged that what happens in one generation can echo into the next — not as punishment, but as consequence and context.
“The sins of the fathers are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation.” — Exodus 20:5
This verse is often read as condemnation, but it can also be understood through the lens of trauma — an inheritance of patterns, nervous systems, fears, and wounds passed down unintentionally.
But God doesn’t leave it there.
“But showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me.” — Exodus 20:6
God is good.
My Mother’s Story, Through This Lens
My grandmother later married a man named Frank. He was deeply unhappy and turned to alcohol to escape his reality. In that process, he couldn’t tolerate my mother. She was a normal two-year-old — playful, noisy, full of life — and that was too much for him.
My grandmother was forced to “get rid of her.” My mother was sent away to distant relatives and raised by Lillian and Homer.
When I look at my mother’s life through this lens, I wonder what her body carried long before she had words for it. She was born out of violence and survival. Her earliest nervous system formed in fear, instability, and separation. She experienced profound rejection — not wanted — and uncertainty around safety and love.
Years later, that same body carried me.
I had my own experiences of stress, rejection, and trauma — and in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time, I passed some of that on to my children.
Epigenetics helps explain why this matters — not as destiny, not as blame, but as biology doing its best to prepare the next generation to survive a world it expects might be dangerous.
Where Art Enters the Story
Trauma often lives below language — in the body, the breath, the nervous system. This is why healing isn’t always found through words alone.
Science shows that creative processes like art engage sensory pathways, emotional memory, and areas of the brain involved in regulation and meaning. Art can help externalize what has been held internally, allowing the body to release what it has carried quietly for years.
This is one reason art therapy exists.
I am not an art therapist. But as a medical provider — and a follower of Jesus — I believe that therapy combined with art, and grounded in faith, can help bring healing to places that have long remained unspoken. Art becomes an invitation to feel safe, to see differently, and to let emotions surface and soften.
Art doesn’t require us to be the maker to have an effect. Simply viewing art — or choosing to live with it — can evoke emotional and physiological responses. Our bodies respond to color, form, movement, and meaning often before our minds catch up.
For some, healing doesn’t come through making art, but through living with it — returning to it daily, letting it speak quietly from a wall or a room. Often, the art we are drawn to reflects something we are holding, something we are longing for, or something we are ready to release.
Creation, Redemption, and Beauty
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1
God is a creator. And when we create — when we paint, build, shape, or behold beauty — we participate in something redemptive.
Art becomes a space where what was inherited can be acknowledged, what was buried can be seen, and what was heavy can be held with tenderness.
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” — Psalm 147:3
Sometimes that binding happens through prayer, through relationship — and sometimes through the quiet act of making or beholding beauty.
A Gentle Closing
As I've said, I'm not an art therapist. But as a medical provider, I've learned that trauma isn't just psychological - it's physiological. Emerging research supports what many of us have felt intuitively: the body remembers, adapts, and carries stories forward. Art has become one way I've learned to listen to those stories - in myself and in others.
Though my mother is no longer here, I will see her again. I grieve that she hasn’t been here for my art journey, but I know she would be deeply — Godly — proud of me.
I carry regrets about our relationship, but this understanding allows me to see us both with compassion: vulnerable humans relying on a Heavenly Father who loves us unconditionally and who uses creativity to help heal what was wounded.
Art doesn't require us to be the maker to have an effect. Research suggests that viewing art engages emotional and sensory regions of the brain involved in memory, meaning and regulation. Even without creating, simply living with art can invite reflection and emotional awareness. For some, healing comes not through making art, but through choosing it - returning to it, sitting with it, letting it speak quietly from a wall or a room. Often the pieces we are drawn to reflect something we are holding, something we are longing for, or something we are ready to release.
There are pieces I've created that I now recognize were carrying more than color and form. They were holding questions I didn't yet have language for - about safety, belonging, longing and rest. When someone tells me a particular painting "won't leave them," or that they feel something shift when they sit with it, I don't see that as coincidence, I see it as resonance. Not because the art heals, but because it creates space - and God does what only He can do in that space.
This is especially true in a painting I did called "Fields of Trust" where themes of waiting gentleness and quiet strength are woven intentionally.
Whether you make art, view it, or live with it in your home, art can become a gentle companion in healing. It doesn’t fix us — but it helps us feel. And sometimes, that’s exactly where God meets us.
Happy Birthday in Heaven, Mama. ~ Shoshana
Disclaimer: This post is for educational and reflective purposes only. Art is not a substitute for professional mental health care. Healing from trauma often involves multiple layers, including therapy, community, faith, and time.